Metro Pulse/Insights/Billboard Blight

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by Joe Sullivan

Anyone who doubts that billboards detract from the quality of life in Knoxville should take a drive down Kingston Pike on a glorious late October afternoon. Heading east from Lovell Road through Bearden no fewer than 30 of these girded protrusions impede the view, to one extent or another, of peak fall foliage on hillsides to the south. A Jack Daniel's board is particularly obtrusive. Coming over Bearden Hill, a leopard touting DSL high-speed connections leaps out at you instead of nature's panorama.

The billboard lobby has seen to it that nothing can be done under Tennessee law to bring down these existing signs except by costly condemnation proceedings. But the city of Knoxville has the wherewithal to prevent any more from going up. A task force appointed by Mayor Victor Ashe has recommended a ban on new billboards, and that ban needs to be adopted by the Metropolitan Planning Commission and City Council before a moratorium on the issuance of new billboard permits runs out on Nov. 22.

Yet at its monthly meeting in October, MPC postponed action on the ban until Nov. 9. The postponement was based on professed concerns over (1) the impact such a ban might have on Knoxville's economic development and (2) the unfair advantage it might give the city's dominant billboard purveyor, Lamar Advertising, over any present or prospective competitors.

While the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership hasn't taken any position on the ban, its president, Tom Ingram, has long stressed quality-of-life issues as being of the utmost importance both in attracting new businesses to the Knoxville area and in recruiting and retaining key people for existing enterprises. "Speaking personally," Ingram says, "a city that takes pride in its appearance and its visual presentation has to deal with this issue and deal with it aggressively while respecting the needs of businesses to present themselves on an equal footing."

A business representative on the billboard task force, Pilot Corp.'s chief financial officer, Jeff Cornish, goes further when he says, "You could get rid of half the billboards on Kingston Pike and they wouldn't be missed." However, Cornish takes a different view where billboards along interstate highways are concerned. "You want people traveling the interstates to be aware and to take advantage of what your city has to offer, but even there I believe we've reached the saturation point."

Economic development types in other cities that have imposed restrictions equal to or more stringent than those proposed here reinforce these views. In Asheville, which banned new billboards in 1997, the vice president for economic development at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, Dave Porter, says, "We had very little fallout from that. Our hotels, restaurants and commercial activities are thriving. The only thing we lost was some chamber members who felt we should have opposed it." Charlotte, Durham and Raleigh have gone further by providing for the removal of a significant number of billboards over time. So have Jacksonville, Orlando, Hillsborough County (Tampa) and Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) in Florida.

"I'm not aware of any specific pain that Charlotte's billboard policy has caused, and from a larger, macro perspective billboards are not an issue when it comes to economic development," says Bob Morgan, vice president for public policy at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.

In North Carolina, Florida and many other states, cities can get rid of billboards via what's known as amortization. Actual removal only occurs after a period of several years during which billboard operators are allowed to get a return on their investment. At the end of this amortization period, though, the operator doesn't get any compensation for the loss of boards that no longer conform to a city's zoning and signage ordinances.

Unfortunately, in Tennessee, non-conforming billboards are protected by a state law that "grandfathers" a property owner's right to continue a pre-existing use in perpetuity. In Knoxville, more than half of the 472 billboards that overhang the city's highways are already non-conforming. But the only way the city can bring any of them down is by paying for them via condemnation proceedings whose costs become prohibitive if pursued on any scale.

The question of who is entitled to these grandfathered rights has also become a controverted issue that contributed to MPC's failure to take any action at its October meeting. MPC's attorney, Steve Weiss, is loud and clear that the rights reside with the landowner on whose property a billboard stands. (The vast majority of billboard sites are leased, typically for terms of 10 to 15 years.) But an attorney for a small-fry operator, Douglas Outdoor Advertising, managed to cast doubt on this presumption by citing a recent court decision that suggests the rights might reside with the billboard permit holder.

If the latter were the case, it would help perpetuate the dominant position that Lamar currently commands in the Knoxville market. By most accounts, more than 80 percent of local billboards are Lamar's, although the company insists it owns only about two-thirds. If only Lamar could retain its present locations at the end of their lease terms, then a ban on new billboards would effectively prevent a competitor from ever challenging Lamar's stranglehold on the market. Such an anti-competitive effect was disturbing to several MPC commissioners, starting with its chairman, Phil French.

Even Douglas' lawyer, John King, acknowledges that "the better law would be that the owner of the land has the right to a non-conforming use." Assuming the better law prevails, a competitor such as Douglas could make inroads as Lamar's present leases run out. But even if it doesn't, there's ample precedent for governmental rationing of precious space in ways that favor the haves over the have-nots.

Allocation of television channel licenses and of take-off and landing slots at congested airports both fit this profile. And the air space that would be taken up by a proliferation of billboards is every bit as precious.

With backing from Mayor Victor Ashe, his billboard task force has recommended a meaningful curb on visual pollution in Knoxville. MPC and City Council should hasten to adopt it before the conclusion of a somewhat tenuous moratorium that was imposed because of a surge in new billboard permit applications.